


Sunrise

by Slinkling



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slinkling/pseuds/Slinkling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written from the prompt, "Zoe/Wash, sunrise."  And that's pretty much exactly what this is.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunrise

Wash had been going on in that way he had, about some lake when he was a kid, and the sun coming up over it, and Zoe wasn't really listening but she had no desire to stop him. She liked to feel his talk wash over her – and yes, she thought it in those words, _wash over her_, and no, she would never tell anyone that, she knew how sappy it sounded. But they hadn't been together long, her and Wash, and she was still discovering that after sex, when she liked to just lie there, sweaty and breathing and blissed out, Wash liked to talk. About anything. Before she'd known Wash she would have thought that annoying, but now she was finding it sweet, the way an apple is sweet when you haven't tasted anything fresh in months. That was another thing she wouldn't tell anybody.

So this time, he was babbling about a lake and his parents and mornings and wonder, she only vaguely keeping track, and then he seemed to get louder and more insistent as she started drifting off. Finally he rolled over to face her, gripped her shoulder. "I'm trying to tell you something important," he said, "about me and the sky, and I've got this whole stirring story about sunrises, and you're not even paying attention."

She studied his face, then gave a slow shrug. "Sunrises never meant much to me," she said. "I was a city girl. The sun was a dirty yellow thing."

Wash looked crestfallen. "You mean you've never seen a real sunrise?"

She had. During the war. "None worth telling about," she told him.

She could see him thinking, and then he scrambled off the bed and hid down beneath it. She tugged up the sheets he'd pulled off her, laughed, "What are you—" but he cut her off, his voice coming up from the floor.

"I'm going to show you," he said. "Go back like you were."

So she lay back down.

Nothing happened.

After a minute, she frowned. "Wash?"

"I'm the sun," he said from beneath the bed.

She pressed her lips together, not to laugh. "Okay." She lay there and waited.

Nothing.

"When are you—" she began, but he interrupted again.

"It's dark out. And you're cold. Actually…" and here an arm snaked up from under the bed to steal her covers. "That's better."

She smirked at the ceiling. And she waited. She crossed her arms over her breasts, which were beginning to feel a chill. Still nothing. "The sun is taking its damn time," she remarked.

"I always do," Wash replied. "But I'm going to rise soon. Just for you. You'll see."

Zoe sighed. She gave her self a squeeze. She warmed the toes of one foot against the opposite shin.

"Very soon," came the voice from below the bed, "I shall rise, to make you warm."

"I just bet you will." Zoe kept waiting. She stretched out her neck a little, turning this way and that. Suddenly she realized she could see the tips of Wash's blond mop peeking up over the foot of the mattress. He hadn't been there before, but she hadn't noticed when he appeared. He didn't seem to be moving, though she watched a long while. And then slowly, surely, he _was_ moving. More of his hair came into view, then his hairline, then his forehead. His eyes. He was staring right at her, all his attention focused on her as he continued rising, until she could see his whole face. His shoulders. His chest. She felt herself flush, the blood coming up to heat her skin, as Wash's belly appeared. His hips. She couldn't look away.

He rose until he could put a knee on the bed, then both, and he crawled up until he was right above her on his hands and knees, still holding her gaze. She loved his eyes, his determination, the goofy sweetness about him. It was the first time she thought the word: love.

"I have risen to make you warm," he murmured, and damn if he didn't sound pleased with himself.

"I can see that," she said, not bothering to hold back her smile. They stayed there, grinning at each other like idiots, until he abruptly collapsed beside her and snuggled in, wrapping an arm around her waist.

"It's just like that," he said. "A good sunrise. You should try one sometime."

_I just did_, she thought, and drifted off to sleep still grinning.


End file.
